The Misbegotten

Estefan spent most of the next day and a half writing. There was precious little to do after he and Leda had pulled the rest of the Synod into his small cabin and announced they were pregnant. He buried himself in the past, most of it pouring out of him in a flood. He was recalling details he had thought were long forgotten, each one as magnificent a revelation as the last.

Still, he hadn’t stopped. The news of a new baby on the way had somehow inspired him to put as much to words as he could. For no real reason, he wanted to tell his newest child as much as about him and his mother. How they had met. How their relationship began. How much trouble they’d found themselves. The list went on and on.

He had gone so far as delegate some of the daily decisions necessary in keeping his massive syndicate running smooth to others. They were, after all, competent. Otherwise, he would’ve hired them in the first place.

Of course, it was astounding to his wives at first. This was monumentous news within the Synod. The last of them was finally giving birth. Like Estefan, none of them had ever expected Leda would allow herself to be with child. To them, it had never seemed to suit her. Though she loved children and was a great surrogate mother to all the other children of the Synod. To a one, she appeared willing to go only as far as that and was content to let all else fall where it may. Being a mother hadn’t been an option until now.

The conversation, as was the norm, had turned to names. If it were a boy or a girl, etc. And then the real planning began. A new child was one the way and there was a lot to do.

Of course, Leda’s living arrangements upon Luna Prime would change. It had long been their practice if any of Estefan’s wives was pregnant. They’d have the rooms and chambers closest to his. These apartments had a connecting door and were vacant, so the move wouldn’t be an intrusion on anyone else.

The last to live there had been Tirza, who had given birth to Patricia (named after Estefan’s late mother). She had lived there until the little girl had turned two. The day after they’d celebrated little Patty’s birthday, Tirza had moved back into her old quarters. The “Pregnant Suite”, as they termed it with love, would undergo preparation for next woman in need of it at once.

They had all known there would still be many more children to come. None of Estefan’s wives would ever be menopausal. They would continue to be fertile until they ran out of viable eggs.

Even when Estefan had been a child, doctors had known 20-week-old female fetuses at could carry as many as six hundred thousand eggs. This number would diminish with time until they had around 400,000 at birth. Your typical, healthy woman would continue to release one of her eggs every twenty-eight earth-days or thereabout. This was true of all females of the Combined Human Race. But for Old-Timers the semblance stopped there. They never stopped menstruating. They never stopped using their clutch of eggs either.

Instead of multitudes dying off with age, they seemed frozen in time like the Old-Timer women themselves. To date, there was no medical facility anywhere in the Sixteen Worlds capable of predicting the duration of an Old-Timer’s fertility. This included the males as well.

So, those of the Aegis Synod had always known there would be more children.

They just hadn’t expected Leda to be the next.

Within minutes of their announcement, they were all in a frenzied state.

He had sat back and watched them drift out of his quarters, in groups of twos and threes until they were all gone. There were too absorbed in their schemes and plans to notice him, which made him smile. With a wry grin on his face and a shake of his head, he head activated his Neuro-Nanoswarm and begun to write. His mind alive with a past he wanted his newest baby to know and understand.

“M’Lord Keeper?” chimed his ‘Swarm via the Comm-consul at the entrance to his room.

Wrapping up the last of his thoughts, Estefan replied: “Speak.”

“Lord, you ordered us to inform you when we begin our descent vector into the Europian atmosphere. We have begun to do so,” explained the Null-ships’ Capitan. Only he and the Synod had direct access to him.

“Very well, I’ll be on the Bridge shortly.”

“Understood, Sir,” and the line went dead.

Anyone who had served him for years at a time knew he wasn’t one to bandy about on a comm-link. Estefan abhorred talking without the person present. Even as a teenager, his cell phone conversations tended to be short.

He waved away his ‘Swarm, activated his armoire, pointing to the garments he would wear.

While outside the outer hull, the Null-ship penetrated the outermost reaches of the manufactured atmosphere of giant moon.

Less than ten minutes later, he was ready. He dressed in his trademark, three-piece suit and expensive, twenty-first century loafers. His face and head he’d shaven clean, he came from his quarters. He walked from the connecting corridor onto the Bridge of the A.S.S. Stingray. Before him, spread the many stations, banks and arrays of the latest in Draxis Corp Null-tech. Through the transparent Diatainium shielding was the immense vista of Jupiter’s sixth moon, Europa.

His wives were all clustered about the Command Deck, milling and talking. Their voices hushed as he approached them.

They were all dressed in the same white and black, skin-tight get up and heels. Leda had worn the same when she’d come into the Keeper’s quarters and told him she was pregnant.

Flavia’s was a different color though, sanguine, the hue of fresh blood. It was the shade she always wore when she felt combat was close at hand. If she got bloody, it wouldn’t show all that much on her clothing. She was expecting trouble.

This made Estefan frown.

“Ready?” asked Ramona coming from the throng, her expression reassuring and soft.

As ready as I’ll ever be, my love, he said to her with his mind.

She nodded, reaching out to stroke his cheek.

He made sure he made eye contact with each of his wives before he turned toward his Command Chair.

Time to get this shit over with!

The chair descended from the ceiling, identical to the Captains’, behind and to the left. He could override any directive given by anyone on the ship or within his fleet from this chair. Seldom did he do so though. He had competent people working for him and trusted in their judgment.

He waved a hand over the Ident-sensor and the seat came to life. It resembled a cocoon more than anything else. It came with an array of sim-screen readouts and displays in such number they could sometimes surround him. Should he be in the midst of a battle, needing thousands of bands of communication at once, the chair would provide it. This, of course, had never happened aboard this particular ship. But a few centuries earlier, on spacecraft not as advanced as the A.S.S. Stingray, he had in fact experienced cocooning. For the Keeper, it hadn’t been all that pleasant.

The Captain, dressed in the black livery of Aegis Marines, wore his full regalia of medals and commendations. His uniform was like any military uniform worn by a high ranking officer. It was a coat, double-breasted, over a thick, white shirt and black slacks with creases as sharp as razors.

He met the Keeper at his Command Chair, saluting him. He did not use the Synod’s signing technique. His salutation was for all to see.

His name was Edward Covington. His familial roots sank deep into the soils of London, England. He was, unlike so many of the Synod, not a Celeste. He was a full grown Tech-Mech. This meant Edward was a complete mechanized nervous system interfaced with an independent Neuro-Nanoswarm. He was a symbiont of machinery and biology, powered by a pear-sized nuclear reactor.

From what Estefan remembered only Captain Edward’s torso, neck and head remained, for the most part, flesh. The rest was all circuitry, wiring and weaponry. The good Captain could pack quite a punch. He had a myriad of lasers, missiles and ballistic armaments concealed within his limbs.

Estefan inclined his head in his direction. He glanced about, reacquainting himself with the layout of the Bridge.

The Aegis Synod didn’t built ships per a given code or set of edicts. Instead, Draxis constructed each spaceship platform to achieve the greatest degree of efficiency. This included movement, command flow, and, in some cases, line-of-sight. Thus, every ship-type to come from the Synod’s massive factories on the dark side of the Moon could be quite different than the last.

For the most part, the rest of the crew stayed where they were. Some of them didn’t bother to look up from the controls and displays they were monitoring. There was the pilot seated before the Captains’ chair, a Senior Weaponeer seated right next to him. He glanced at up when the Captain has passed his station.

Stationed in wide swaths to both the right and left of this central area were an array of officers and engineers. Navigators, technicians, logistics, intelligence and communications personnel sat toward the front of the bridge. A group of three defensive coordinators and a sub-systems moderator worked to either side of the Keeper. There were also engineers for flight, life support, ship integrity and evasion seated to the rear. Huge sim-screens blocked most of them from view.

There was also one of Jacob’s security details at the entrance to the Bridge. There were four of them on the bridge itself and six more in a small cubical outside the command and control center itself. They watched everyone and everything that came near the Keeper.

The officers were all distinct and identifiable to the Keeper, but not by uniform. It was the wide set of armbands they wore over each bicep that specified their role upon the Bridge.

Once out of the CIC, they would remove those armbands. They would place them in a small holding box attuned to their ‘Swarm and their ‘Swarm alone. The Synod made it difficult for outsiders to identify who was who within their organization. If captured or killed, the armbands themselves would burn off. This served as a failsafe linked between individual ‘Swarms and the piece of fabric itself. It was yet another layer of security keeping Estefan and his precious family from undo harm.

“M’Lord Keeper, Europian Ground Control has hailed the ship. They’ve given instructions for us to remain in the upper atmosphere for the time being. They are lowering their planetary defenses as we speak. In a few minutes, they will allow your private Skycar to descend to the surface by way of a narrow corridor.” He spoke in a clipped military fashion.

“How did they know we were here, Captain?” he asked with an edge. His eyes moved about the strong, angular jaw, the deep-set eye sockets and strong cheekbones of the other man. The fact, he wore a trimmed beard and mustache was rare in this day and age, but it wasn’t against regulations per se.

Estefan didn’t say anything about it. In fact, he had no opinion at all.

The commanding officer of the Stingray cleared his throat. “We all know of your long-time alliance with the Islamic Federation of Nations on Europa. I thought it a courtesy to remove our stealth capabilities a few moments before entering their detection net. I figured it would be rude to do otherwise, Sir.”

The Keeper smiled and patted the Captain upon the shoulder. The metal clunk beneath Estefan’s heavy hand had them both look to where the sound originated. A Tech-Mech and a Heavy – they weren’t as unlike as one would think.

“It would’ve been. You have done well, though I take it our Null-tech remains as it should, correct?”

“Absolutely, Your Imminence, my intention was to be kind, not stupid.” There was a smile spreading across his face now, though it didn’t match his eyes. It was a soldiers’ grin – the sort worn while killing.

Estefan chuckled and took his seat within the Command Chair, which began to reform itself about his body. On automatic, it began compensating for his tremendous weight. He gazed at the vista before him for the second time in so many minutes.

It had been a long time since he had last visited Europa himself. It was always a Senior Lieutenant or one of the High Command he’d send in his place nowadays. He knew the representatives of the Federation preferred it that way.

Upon his last visit, there had been no atmosphere about the giant moon. There were no clouds or roiling Coriolis storms. All those years ago, it hadn’t been safe to walk the expansive ice sheets, the earthquakes and outgassing had been lethal.

There hadn’t been the vast constellation of Grav/Anti-Grav satellites above its surface either. They’d been place in orbit, one at a time, year after year, by the Synod. It had been in fulfillment of a never-ending contract dating back to the twenty-first century.

The icy surface was now protected from the titanic tugs and pulls of Jupiter’s gravity-well. The incessant tremors became a thing of the past. As the satellites forced the gravity of the Brown Dwarf around the moon and off into space, the surfaced calmed. Though the wake caused by this man-made fluctuation could destroy they hardiest of ships. It took only a mere calculation to avoid it. Or, in some cases, use it as a secondary boost to sling-shot free of the Jovian system altogether.

Looking down upon it now, Estefan felt nothing but gratitude for the brave Muslim men and women below. They had gone out on a limb to assist him and his family when they needed it most. Of course, they had profited from that assistance, but it was beside the point. They could’ve ignored the pleas of the fledgling Synod. They could’ve deemed them amateur and, thus, unworthy of an audience.

Yet, they hadn’t. They had come to the table and negotiated. A deal they struck with the Synod. One pound of Diatainium and twelve point five two five billion in cash, materiel and weapons had changed hands. The Federation had gained enough energy to pull itself out of crushing depression. The Aegis Synod garnered enough to wage all-out war against the Northern Intercontinental Alliance. The eve of the Great War for Los Angeles had come.

It had been the first step in many. The two entities would talk side-by-side against the powers that be. Together they would struggle to survive, comrades-in-arms, but would remain steadfast in ideological opposition. As one, they had intercepted high-priority flash traffic. They had searched a method to produce independent Diatainium. And together, they pulled off the greatest heist in the history of humankind.

The Islamic Federation and the Aegis Synod had trudged through time like reluctant cousins. They were allies bound by only a common goal. The healthy continuance of their individual peoples was all that mattered.

Beyond that, there was nothing between them. There hadn’t been communication in more than a century. The Federation was completely autonomous now. They had cut themselves off from the Sixteen Worlds. These brave Muslims were content now. They preferred an existence outside the ebb and flow of the rest of humanity scurrying about. They wanted no part of the seven hundred, sixty-six point eight billion souls living about them.

We put each other on the map, he thought as he watched clouds form, blow away and then reform again. His mind was half-guessing at their shapes. The other half still pondered the mission before them, the price of it and the consequences of discovery. Was it worth it? Did he owe that much to the Federation? Did it make sense to risk his family?

His delving into his corrupted youth hadn’t provided answer enough to the question yet. He had written enough to understand how much each of his wives meant to him. He had even been able to pinpoint exact moments when those bonds become more than concepts of an aged mind. He now knew the moment they made them into the firmament of his bygone reality. Whether it was Katie and their love for one another or his realization that, after so much bad blood had passed between them, he still loved Tirza, he knew the precise time. No, he remembered the precise time. He knew when those innocent decisions shifted the course of his life – forever.

The list of those decisions went on and on. Each one was as important to him as the next. But it helped little when it came to the risk of possessing the Shadow Spark. Add the mysterious Destro-Mancer to the mix and the whole situation became evermore dire. They still hadn’t gleaned a single useful thread of information about the man. If he was, in fact, a man and not a figment of someone’s wild imagination.

For some reason, he thought of Jacob. The nagging sensation that he should’ve heard something from him by now grew with each passing hour. If he did not hear from him in another day there would be no doubt in his mind. There was some impending doom upon the horizon that I could not see yet. This bothered him more than anything. He hated feeling the unknown crawl about the mantle of his shoulders. He had started wars because of inklings of that nature in the past.

Was that it? Was war coming?

He pushed the thought aside. He made a mental note to redouble Synod efforts. They had to scrape up something, anything, on this so-called Destro-Mancer. This heretofore, unique Celeste, who rumor had it could wield a Mutation unlike any seen in three hundred and fifty years.

A warbling sound filled the Bridge, deep and resonant, like a bell toll, only drawn out. It was the chime the A.S.S. Stingray used to signify someone was hailing them.

The Captain, in his own chair, flicked a finger over the left side of his cocoon.

In the center of the transparent Diatainium shield an ultra-high definition image appeared. It was that of a middle-aged man. He had a broad face, kind eyes and a large nose holding spectacles typical of a graduate student. He dressed in the traditional fashion. He wore a Classic Arabian Shora and a formal, slate–colored Furwah, embroidered at the seams, cuffs and neck, covering him from head to foot. It was a garment worn for cool weather, which seemed appropriate, since he was on the surface of Europa. He should be wearing it over a full-length Dishdashas.

Estefan couldn’t tell for sure due to the angle of the transmitting video device.

A smile spread across his wide face, making his eyes squint. “As-salamu alykum!” he began, then paused with dramatic aplomb. He spread his hands to either side of him. “The Keeper of the Peace - never would I have thought to lay eyes upon you after so many years away from my people. It is good to see you, Honored Guest.” He bowed at the waist, his head dipping as well.

Estefan came from his Command Chair, returning the bow, making sure its depth was exactly the same as his host’s. “Wa `alaykumu s-salāmu wa rahmatu l-lāhi wa barakātuh,” he replied. It was the most ceremonial greeting he could muster. It had been a long time since he’d spoke Arabic.

Almost everyone on the Bridge turned to look at the Keeper, astonishment written upon their faces.

Even the Captain reeled back on his heels, his gears there whizzing and hissing, but he stayed otherwise silent.

Somehow the man’s smile broadened even more. “It had been long known that you were well versed in our ways. But I must admit I am shocked to hear you speak one of our many languages so well.”

“I had a good teacher,” clarified Estefan.

“Ah yes, my long lost ancestor. Tell me, Your Eminence, how long has it been since you spoke a tongue of the blessed and true believers of Islam?”

“Too long, my friend, it has been too long.”

The man on the sim-screen seemed to consider this for a time. His smile locked upon his face, his mind racing with thoughts Estefan could only guess at. Then he seemed to catch himself and said in a rush: “Forgive me, Lord Keeper. It has been a long time since I’ve addressed anyone other than my brothers and sisters of the One True Faith. It was not my intention to waste your time. I apologize.”

Estefan shook his head.

“Please, we have neutralized our space defenses down a narrow vector suitable for a Skycar to navigate to the surface of our home. Whenever you are ready, please come and meet with me, so we may talk further of times long past. We are sending you the coordinates to New Jerusalem as I speak.”

“Thank you, I will join you at once,” was all Estefan said, nodding, brisk and not without a degree of impatience.

Before him, the man projected on the screen smiled anew. He placed his hands, palms up, to either side if his head as if he were about to pray. “Good, and may Allah grant the last leg of your journey be uneventful.” A second later, the image vanished.

Estefan glanced over at his wives. “Come let’s get this shit over with! I want the package aboard this ship - safe and hidden - in less than two hours.”

There were nods all around, followed by a flurry of movement.

By then though, the Keeper was gone.